Rigorous Engagement for a Community of Learners

GUEST POST: STARR SACKSTEIN

The following is a guest blog post by Starr Sackstein, one of my favorite education bloggers. Starr is an ELA/Journalism teacher in New York and true innovator and leader in the field of education. I am honored to have Starr's contributions to this blog as she is an extremely insightful educator who understands how to prepare students to be successful. The concepts Starr shares are important aspects of ComPassion-Based Learning, as she explains how to promote a culture of autonomy, mastery, and purpose as well as teaching them to become self-directed learners. Building this culture is a critical element in empowering students and allowing them to "make a difference".

I recommend following Starr's blog at: http://starrsackstein.com/  and following her on Twitter @mssackstein

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Rigorous Engagement for a Community of Learners

by Starr Sackstein, NBTC

World Journalism Prep School, NY

@mssackstein

mssackstein@gmail.com

 Students in my AP class work in groups to create modern day comic strips of scenes from Hamlet. I assigned the scene and they did the rest. How they want to present, how they want to create, completely up to them. As you can see in the picture, kids aren't in seats, but working wherever it works for their groups.

Some may say that it takes a room full of type-A kids completely motivated by intrinsic or extrinsic prizes to create a community of learners.

I say, we can create engaged community by supporting authentic choices to share responsibility for learning in a classroom for all kids, all the time.

Shake off your image of traditional classrooms: desks in rows, kids silently working to signify engagement.

And now consider a noisy, multi-tiered room where kids are working on similar skills but are choosing the means through which they show what they know. They work alone or in pairs or groups, whichever suits the learning best.

It’s a little chaotic, but completely worth it.

Building a classroom like this takes some effort. First you have to reset norms and erase years of traditional learning.

As a teacher you need to consider that a quiet classroom is not necessarily a productive one. Productive noise shows real student engagement, so remind kids that you want them to participate and that will sometimes mean working in groups or alone, moving around, talking and/or using technology.

If learning is truly going to make an impact, they need to understand why they are learning what they are and have some kind of investment in it. So invite them to help make decisions about projects and class lessons and even what they read and who they work with.

A teacher who wants to be facilitating a truly rigorous environment maintains high, transparent standards and offers multiple ways and time for each student to meet them. Provide them with not only choice in content, but also choice of mode of presentation. Show them models and explore possibilities, most of all, make them hyper-aware of what they are doing.

Teach them about their learning. Let them rewrite standards. Let them set the goals and decide when they feel they have reached them. Support them through their authentic journey by making yourself available during class time and outside of class for conferences and answer questions like it’s your only job.

Realize that you don’t have to know everything they do; you just have to know how to support them in their pursuit of learning. Be honest and humble and learn with them, to truly be a part of the community.

A classroom that shares responsibility: takes risks together, pushes each other and creatively engages all kids, most of the time.

Not learning isn’t a choice.

If you see a child, not choosing to participate, engage them. Ask them why. Work with them to develop a strategy that works for them.

My Mixed Media class gave me a challenge at the start of last year. 10th graders with learning challenges from all over the spectrum. If it wasn’t an elective class, I would have had a second teacher in the room with me. To add insult to injury, my class was first period and many of them were repeaters. 32 students, almost all who didn’t want to be there.

“I didn’t choose this class. I’m not interested in journalism.”

At first, I ardently tried to follow my curriculum map to no avail. We talked about media and the messages that media conveys segueing into the presidential election which I was assured of that non of them were interested in.

By November, they all knew what was going on. They could all write news articles about political coverage and they were interested in who would win.

But it didn’t stop there. Then came Hurricane Sandy and the break in learning was hard to rebound from. But rather than stick to the program, I decided to take a visual approach moving into a photojournalism unit.

The kids responded to the visual - well, even better than expected. They did project after project and became really good at writing cutlines and creating compelling images to tell stories.

But the best success of the year was when I cut the reins completely. I told them that they would design their final projects: write the assignment, create the rubric by which they planned on being graded, do the assignment and then reflect on their learning based on the standards. If they completed this process, they could NOT, would NOT fail.

The whole room looked surprised, but took on the challenge not realizing that it was harder than it sounded. I knew it would be harder than anything I could create for them.

You can read about the whole process here.  (once on my website, you can see some of their work in different posts)

Overall, what the students produced far exceeded my expectations, even the kids who didn’t work all year.

Giving the students the opportunity to take control of their own learning paid off big time and despite our disagreements at the beginning of the year, almost unanimously, kids thanked me at the end, wishing they would have me again next year. This was a huge change from the beginning when the mass exodus tried to happen.

Human beings are inherently engaged when they have choices over what they do and the appropriate help to be successful. Give it a try. If you’d like my help, I’d love to collaborate.

 Students in my AP class work in groups to create modern day comic strips of scenes from Hamlet. I assigned the scene and they did the rest. How they want to present, how they want to create, completely up to them. As you can see in the picture, kids aren't in seats, but working wherever it works for their groups.


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Who said we are not old enough?

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.
     - John F. Kennedy

Participation Nation:

Almost every citizen in our democracy has the right to vote and, therefore, impact who becomes the next mayor, governor, president, school board member, or other elected office.  Of course you have to be 18 to vote, but do you have to be 18 to make an impact?  

It was time to teach about elections!  Obviously this would be reserved for Social Studies class, correct?  Not so fast!  The Communities program at Oshkosh North High School implements a Compassion-Based Learning model which ties together social studies, science, literacy, and leadership, and business courses.  Instead of compartmentalizing the subject areas into silos, the Communities program has done a wonderful job of breaking down the "brick walls" of these silos and teaching students that the "real world" is a combination of every subject area.  Reading, writing and  speaking are integral parts of the elections process and many of the decisions that are made by our elected officials are impacted by science, whether it be from research funding, to environmental issues, to health care.  This past year, by the time we had reached the "Elections" unit, the culture had been created and students understood that life is interdisciplinary.  During the unit, students were introduced to the major elections that were taking place and compared them to elections from the past.  Students discussed the importance of the elections process and the impact that elected officials could have on decisions which affected everyone.  Students learned how to do research using primary and secondary sources of information.  These, along with other things we did, are all things that I envision students doing during a typical elections unit in school.  This wasn't a typical elections unit in school, however.  This is COMPASSION-BASED LEARNING.  Our staff was determined to show the relevance and application of this topic and to tie it to something the students were passionate about.  We wanted to empower them.  We wanted to encourage them to do a hands-on project that would not only solidify their knowledge about this topic, but would help make our community a better place. 

None of our students are 18 years old, though.  Could they really have an impact on the elections?  Absolutely!!!  Students began to brainstorm ideas and were soon convinced that each of them could have a larger impact on the elections than than someone who remained quiet and simply cast their one vote.  Social Studies teacher Rick Leib, along with feedback from students decided on the following project:

Participation Nation!

We invited politicians in to speak to our students and were fortunate enough to get two wonderful speakers (one from each party).  Next, students compiled research and decided upon the topics that were the "Most Important" regarding the presidential elections.  Students divided into groups and spent time researching these topics.  They worked hard to develop non-partisan explanations and the history of each of these topics.  Then with the help of Fox Valley Technical College and one of their very benevolent instructors (Dan Kretz), the students began to write up these summaries so they could be posted on a website.  The website would act to inform voters of the issues that were important to this election.  They felt that, although they could not vote, they could impact the elections by educating anyone who was uncertain of the issues.

Many students were excited!  They wrote and revised their explanations of the topics.  The students then decided to promote their work and talked to area television stations and radio stations.  Several of our students were invited to speak live on radio stations, to create "vote" commercials on a radio station, and to speak in front of a television camera describing the project for the news.  Although the students were nervous, they did a wonderful job and represented our project admirably.









Students also decided to make signs encouraging people to vote.  On "elections day" students  walked around with signs encouraging people to vote.  They talked with their parents, friends, neighbors, and community members and encouraged everyone to express their beliefs by casting their vote.

The experience was wonderful.  I have never in my life seen a large group of teenage students so excited for an election.  During the debates the students engaged in "Forum Discussion Sessions" on Edmodo and Google in which questions were posted by teachers and student moderators and other students would answer.  Question such as:  Who do you think is winning this debate as of now?  

What do you notice about their body language?  Do you think the moderator is doing a good enough job of controlling the debate?  We had the majority of our students watching and commenting on a presidential debate on several different nights.

This project provided an opportunity to learn about elections, politics, history and a variety of other "content" topics.  Students also learned about many 21st century skills including collaboration, communication, research, critical thinking, argumentation, etc...  Most importantly the students had PASSION!!!  The students, who were all under 18, were not supposed to matter in this election.......but they DID!!!  They took the initiative, believed in themselves, and created an enthusiastic environment that was contagious.  The website, which can be found at http://www.participationnation.info/important-election-facts/ received over 22,000 views and compliments from many voters.  Our students impacted the elections, made a valuable contribution to society, became empowered and proved that THEY MATTER!!!

Thank you for reading this!
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or concerns, please let me know.

oliver.schinkten@oshkosh.k12.wi.us
Twitter:  @schink10

Oliver Schinkten
Co-Founder of Communities at ONHS